Courtesy of Anna Tjeltveit |
Anna Tjeltveit, 18, is an William Allen High School senior who's been awarded the grand prize for Wesleyan University's Hamilton Prize for Creativity, bestowed upon creative written work reflecting the originality, artistry and dynamism embodied in "Hamilton: An American Musical." Tjeltveit won a four-year full ride scholarship to Wesleyan, where she'll study English.

Allentown student wins Hamilton’ contest with a shout out from Lin-Manuel Miranda

Earlier this week, the most famous man in musical theater at the moment — Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created and starred in the outrageously successful “Hamilton: An American Musical,” a hip-hop play about founding father Alexander Hamilton — tweeted out a congratulatory message to one Anna Tjeltveit, a William Allen High School student who was awarded the grand prize for Wesleyan University's “Hamilton” Prize for Creativity.

The grand prize is a full-tuition scholarship to Wesleyan, where she plans to major in English with a focus on creative writing. She hasn't really considered playwriting as a career but when asked responded, “Maybe!” and added that she usually writes "longform prose.”

Tjeltveit is thrilled at the idea of potentially staging her winning one-act play, “Five Steps,” someday, a possibility she hadn't even considered when she submitted it.

It's been a whirlwind set of weeks for Tjeltveit, who's set to graduate from William Allen in a matter of days. Tjeltveit took a few minutes to speak with us via phone Friday afternoon about the play and the win.

RE: How did you find out about this contest?

AT: This is the third year for the contest, but they just added two honorable mention prizes. Wesleyan promotes it pretty heavily for applicants, and the president at Wesleyan called around 4 on Wednesday to tell me I'd won.

RE: What was the application process like for the contest?

AT: I applied to Wesleyan through early decision, which was due Jan. 1, and that was was also the due date for the “Hamilton” contest entry. I found out I got into Wesleyan in February.

This play was sort of a “Hail Mary” that I came up with 15 days before the deadline. I'd been working on this longform short story that just wasn't working and decided to stop freaking out about it and just have fun.

RE: Can you explain what your play (“Five Steps”) is about? It was inspired by Greek mythology, right?

AT: The way that I've been describing it to my friends is that Persephone is an Instagram self-care guru with a foolproof five-step process to improve your life. She visits the underworld to help Hades, who's depressed, to get out of his funk.

RE: How'd you even start to come up with that?

AT: In August I started to make a list of possible story ideas for the “Hamilton” contest and I kept playing around with this idea of the Grimm Reaper. I had this sentence stuck in my head: “My friend got an internship with Google. I'm stuck interning with the Grimm Reaper all summer. "

So I was thinking about the Grimm Reaper and dehumanizing death, but it's hard to separate associations (that exist) that are going to make people laugh. So then I naturally sort of thought, well the god of death is Hades, which shifted into Hades and Persephone.

And then I had this idea about Persephone being this Carleton sweater and Birkenstock-wearing Instagram celebrity. She has a thing for tote bags with vegetable puns on them that say things like “Kale yeah, I'm a vegan!” And she starts trying to get Hades out of his depression.

(Tjeltveit added via email that in the final play she decided to put Persephone in a bright yellow crop top, but the Birkenstocks were still intact.)

RE: So did you get to meet Lin-Manuel Miranda during the final stages?

AT: I'm still hoping to meet him, oh my God. I got an email last week that said “you're a finalist and your play is going to be read by a panel of judges including Lin-Manuel Miranda” and I was just freaking out. I didn't even think I'd be a finalist — I mean, I came up with it 15 days before the deadline. It was a play with these vegetable puns.